Consumers have a variety of choices and options for watching television programming, Video-On-Demand (VOD) content, Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) content, personal or custom video content, and the like. Televisions (TV's) and/or Set-Top Boxes (STB's), Digital Video Recorders (DVR's), cable boxes, satellite boxes, multimedia servers, etc. combine to provide an environment in which consumers can enjoy a plethora of video content choices within their home.
However, integrating and viewing each of these types of video selections can be cumbersome, non intuitive, expensive, and in many cases space limiting because of the variety of devices needed to accomplish proper interconnection to a TV and because various connection cords required to attach and to power those devices. For example, to typically watch a streaming home video on a TV within a residential environment, a consumer may be required to interface a multimedia server, which is separate from the consumer's cable box. The multimedia server and the cable box are each physically located in close proximity to the TV and connected directly to the TV and each have a specific connection arrangement to the TV and perhaps to each other. Moreover, proper connection and physical configuration are not all that is needed to properly view the streaming home video. That is, the TV or the STB often has to be manually switched by the consumer to a different input source entirely from the normal TV programming before the streaming home video being supplied over the multimedia server can actually be viewed on the TV.
So, watching TV programming and IP live home security videos on the same TV often requires multiple types of STB's, the proper physical space for the STB's, the proper connection wires and power outlets to interface the STB's, and requires knowledge about the TV for purposes of manually switching back and forth between proper input sources on that TV, which represent IP live home security video being streamed to the TV and normal TV programming.
As a result, integration of streaming IP live home security video within a residential environment is not as pervasive as it could be within the industry and it is usually reserved for consumers with higher technical aptitudes to integrated multiple devices and higher personal incomes to buy those multiple devices. Generally, the average consumer is more likely to press the TV/Video button to watch IP live home security videos or try to record it to a DVD like he/she may do with a DVR interfaced to their TV's. Yet, this also requires the consumer to have a DVR or DVD writing device and this also adds steps in the process, which the consumer must learn and know how to perform. So, even this alternative approach is really not as automated and integrated as it should be.
Thus, it is advantageous to provide techniques for more efficient video integration within a residential environment.